Al-Monitor: Turkey has offered to mediate between the KDP and the YPG/PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] over Sinjar. The tensions between your forces and the YPG-PKK that played a significant part in the liberation of Sinjar are well known. You want the YPG to leave Sinjar and they are resisting?
Barzani: The Turks wanted to play a role and it came a little late because when the Kurds came under attack from [IS] the expectation was that Turkey would play a much bigger role by actively engaging and providing the support that the Kurds needed. Sinjar is a completely different story. Sinjar is deep inside our territories.
The problem there [the IS occupation] was solved with the help of coalition airstrikes but primarily by the peshmerga forces. Sinjar is a Kurdish territory inside Iraq and the PYD [the YPG’s political arm] is a guest exactly in the same way that our peshmerga forces were when they went to support them in Kobani, but then returned.
It is the expectation of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan that foreign fighters eventually leave and go back to where they came from.
Al-Monitor: Isn’t the greatest expectation among Kurds everywhere that you rise above your differences and unite? I have heard many say that an army uniting all the different Kurdish groups should be formed?
Barzani: We are uniting already against [IS]. There are Kurds from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. As for a united Kurdish army of all these different groups, you have to understand the reality on the ground. It’s probably premature to think that such a thing would happen, especially given Iraqi Kurdistan’s own unique situation. It would be best for Kurds from other parts to help the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Al-Monitor: How would that translate in Sinjar?
Barzani: Like I said, the PKK has no role to play. They should pull out and they must because the people of Sinjar will determine their own future and this is Iraqi Kurdistan. Would the PKK be happy if a Kurdish political party inside Iraq meddled in the affairs of Diyarbakir or Mardin? But there are parties inside the Kurdish community within Turkey that definitely should be allowed to play a role. We believe in a multiparty system. PYD-PKK elements must pull out when the situation gets back to normal.
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